


Drowning in a Field of Roses

by Melancholy_Daydreamer



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Past Character Death, Trauma, first fic help, itll probably get better, mention of execution, mentioned death, new with tags so pls spare me, so its kinda bad, they are family ok, was written a while back for annes death anniversary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:56:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27643789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melancholy_Daydreamer/pseuds/Melancholy_Daydreamer
Summary: Recently, Anne has been having relapsing dreams of her memories, especially the one of her execution day. Support comes in the form of her fellow queens, but especially from Katherine Howard.
Relationships: Beheaded Cousins - Relationship
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	Drowning in a Field of Roses

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this back in May for Anne's Death Day Anniversary, but didn't post it because I wasn't satisfied with it. Now here we are, 6 months later. I hope you guys enjoy reading this!

When you’re dreaming, is it possible to simulate a death? Do you feel the water rushing in and filling your lungs when you dream of drowning? The pressing impact and the wind rushing past your hair as you fall almost endlessly until you hit the ground? These were the subconscious thoughts of Anne Boleyn as she seemingly relived her worst nightmare.

Up in the Tower of London, she sat in her cell, back in her 16th-century clothes. Her corset pressed against her chest as she struggled to breathe, choking out a breath through every hysterical sob. While she remembered how she paced endlessly and sobbed like this in knowing that Elizabeth would be safe, and a monarch of Henry VIII, she had eventually calmed down enough to look civil and prepared for her execution. But this was different. It wasn’t real. Was it real? 

Every stone brick fitted in all the right places, the bars black like obsidian and the rhythmic drips of water in the corners of her cell. She wanted to bang her head against the walls and scream because she knew she was dreaming, but the cell held fast, and so did the reality of it all, leaving the former queen as a huddled, hysterical mess on the cobblestone floor for the guards to find the next morning.

As they unlocked her cell door, the guards hoisted her up to her feet and dragged her out into the open. They spiraled down the staircase as Anne stared bleakly into seemingly nothing, her cheeks numb and eyes red from sobbing. 

They passed through a small garden section where the royal gardener tended to all the flowers, and Anne glanced at the row of roses that decorated the path. The white and red petals were dripping with morning dew, and a little yellow bumblebee landed onto a rose and nestled into it, still shivering from the early morning cold. It was so peaceful out in the back gardens, where the quiet chirping of songbirds up in the trees sang merrily without a care in the world, welcoming a new day.

Her poetic train of thought was soon cut short as the guards turned the corner and the colorful patch of the garden disappeared behind a wall of bricks. She fumbled up each step until she reached a platform. A crowd of high-ranking individuals stood before her, muttering to one another and staring at her as if she were some sort of animal. She couldn’t recognize anyone. It had been almost 500 years since her death.

_How long has she been in this dream?_

A man with a thin smile approached her. It was strange, although she knew he was smiling she couldn’t make out his face. It was as if someone had scribbled over his features or spilled ink over his appearance. Behind his back, he brandished a long silver sword that reflected her face off it. She could’ve sworn she saw space buns on her head and a strange green glow emitting from her eyes. She would’ve taken a second glance but he turned the blade away from her face, leaving her to stare at the dusted marble instead. She almost automatically turned from him and slowly kneeled down, clasping her shaking hands, just as she had done centuries before. A few things felt inconsistent though. No goodbyes to give, no blindfold to obscure her vision.

Anne was left to face her fate head-on. Her body and mouth moved to their own accord, reciting every prayer and command to God naturally. It would’ve been flawless if it wasn’t for the stutters that formed no particular words every once in a while and the nonstop shaking that quaked her body. Her mind felt muddled and obscured, terrified and traumatized.

After uttering her last statement, she saw **him** again. She felt herself seizing in terror as the blade glanced under her chin, taunting to cut across her neck until crimson waterfalls would pour out of her. The man sneered at her silent terror. She wanted to run, to wrestle the blade out of his hands, and turn it on him. But she felt a crushing pressure that made her ribs dig into her lungs painfully and until she couldn’t bear to move. She couldn’t **breathe.** It was as if the crowd’s gaze pinned her down as she struggled. The man lifted his blade, the sword glancing off of the sun’s beams to blind her. The blade came down and...

It all went black.

She jolted awake in bed, catching herself mid-scream in order not to wake the other queens. While she did enjoy spending the night hanging out with them to deal with relapses of nightmarish memories, she didn’t want to wake them up for the 47th time in a row this month. For the past few months, her dreams had been relentlessly tormenting her, every time she closed her eyes she only saw the man and his blade, ready to cut her down. 

A quick glance in the mirror from across her room on the makeup table confirmed how disheveled she looked. Her hair was also faintly highlighted in the light of the nightlight on the windowsill next to her, shown ruffled and in disarray.

She turned to stare emptily at the clock on the wall that faintly ticked the seconds down. _3:48 am,_ it read, illuminated by the solitary nightlight. 

She sighed. _Just calm yourself down, Anne._ She murmured reassuringly to herself. Her heart was beating so fast, like the sound of a drum that hammered into her chest painfully. 

Her hand unconsciously drifted to her neck. She already expected the burning sensation to sear her skin from just a simple touch. She winced a little, but couldn’t stop as her hand lightly traced every scarred over gash, every uneven bump of skin, every crisscross that connected all the way around her neck. 

She was careful not to graze her nails over the scar, she didn’t need to feel something cold and hard pressing down on the skin of her neck again.

After what seemed like hours of quietly catching her breath, the cooling touch of her fingers ceased the burning, although it could not stop the rapid thrumming of her heart. She sighed once more.

A tired mumble stirred from below her bunk. 

“Kitten? Did I wake you up?” She called out hopefully.

“Yeah, I’m here.” A muffled reply came from beneath Anne’s bunk. “Why are you screaming at 3 am? Nightmare?” Her cousin’s tired voice inquired.

A pause. Silence engulfed the room for a second.

“... Yeah. A relapse of my memories.”

“Huh. Usually, I’m the one that has frequent memory-nightmares.” Katherine replied dryly, and Anne snorted a little. Frequent was an understatement for Katherine’s nightmares. Her poor baby cousin would wake up screaming hysterically in the middle of the night from an unseen horror and Anne would have to calm her down and reassure her that it was okay.

“I’m coming up.”

“Wait. What?”

How the tables had changed as after a minute, she heard the quiet creaking of the ladder as her cousin scaled up to her bed, her eyes blinking rapidly, hazed over with sleep as she reached the top. In the faint glow of Anne’s windowsill lamp, she saw her younger cousin with her arms crossed, her legs crossed, toes crossed, everything crossed. 

“So.” Katherine prompted. “What’s up? Has something been stressing you out lately?”

Anne had to take a moment to recall her thoughts from yesterday. No new pranks needed any preparation, no new events for her to attend, nothing in particular. Just her usual busy schedule of ‘playing’ the part of Anne Boleyn. 

Then what was causing her to relapse her memories? Although traumatizing, her trauma wasn’t easily triggered unlike Kat’s. Then it dawned on her.

See, ever since their reincarnation, Anne had never stopped counting the minutes, the hours, the days, the years, the decades, **the centuries** since her death. She knew the rest of the queens also remembered important dates and events from their past in a similar fashion, but she knew that both her and Kathy took it steps further into counting every possible unit of time for one simple event.

The day of their beheading.

Today was May 19th. The day of _her beheading._ She turned to tell Kat, but the girl had already realized by this point. A small sob wracked out of Anne’s chest and she almost choked trying to hold it in. Her cousin wrapped her arms around her, her curled pink hair fumbling onto Anne’s shoulders and as she buried her face into her hands. “It’s alright.” She whispered, rocking her back and forth to console her. After a quiet moment of hushed sobbing, Anne allowed Katherine to finally pull back. 

“If you can’t sleep, why don’t we stay up? Watch a little bit of TV?” Katherine suggested.

Anne smiled, a tear streaking silently down her cheek, but she wiped it away quickly before it could stain her pajamas. _Everything’s changed. He can’t hurt us anymore. He can’t hurt me anymore._

“I’d love to.”


End file.
